The architect of the way out of the moments of shadows that the Brazilian Olympic Committee experienced when it was provisionally suspended for buying votes for Rio 2016 was Paulo Wanderley Teixeira, a lifelong judo player. He is currently 73 years old and a few years ago he took on the challenge of being the president of the aforementioned Brazilian committee without imagining that he would return the prestige and position his country in the places it deserves to be as a power in the continent.

Wanderley Teixeira recently talked to SportsIn at the premises of the Brazilian Olympic Committee in Rio de Janeiro’s Olympic Park, and was grateful for the opportunity to explain the pillars of his management. His look is serene, he transmits tranquility and aspires for his country to be at the top of the Olympic podium, but without renouncing fair play and teamwork.

Question – Why did you assume the presidency of the BOC, knowing how serious the accusations were?

Wanderley Teixeira: “I am a judo player, I live the sport to the fullest from my space of reflection and analysis. I felt it was time. We had no margin or time to recriminate ourselves or look for culprits, it was the opportunity to give back to the sport the space it deserves and should never have lost.

Besides, there is the human capital: we have athletes and the Brazilian’s own biotype to conquer their dreams and not look back because that time has passed and we have no possibility of recovering it; but we can learn from mistakes and bad practices that cannot be repeated”.

Wanderley Teixeira. (COB)

Did you break the schemes and made transparent all the economic income received by the COB?

W. T.: “I arrived at the end of 2017 and we set several goals from organizational transparency and having good governance. The first thing we did was to make available to everyone what the economic resources that come from gambling, private enterprise and the state itself are invested in. Remember that for concepts of games of chance we receive around 100 million dollars that we have to distribute with technical criteria and international projection, besides making the system work in 360º”.

Your next and great challenge is the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, what does your country aspire to?

W. T.: “To surpass what we did in Tokyo 2020+1, where we finished 12th in the medal table. For Paris we will try to fight with other world powers, such as France, Germany, Italy, Canada, among others, and we definitely aim to join the select group of the ‘top ten’. It is difficult, but for Brazilian athletes nothing is impossible and we are going to try”.